Seasons Change – Conversations with Stella

I am Stella, Queen of the Olde English Bulldogges. The cicadas are dying. Here. And here.

Me: I know. You need not pile them at my feet.

Stella: But they are dying, Lady Human! Why?

Me: It is the end of their season. They have done their job.

Stella: But they only hatched out a few weeks ago. They waited in the ground for 17 years and only stayed a few weeks? I don’t understand.

Me: They hatched. They sang in the trees. They mated. They laid their eggs. And 17 summers from now…

Stella: …the eggs they just laid will hatch and the babies will do it all over again. How sad.

Me: Or how comforting. It’s a great cycle. The locusts…sorry, cicadas that hatch next year will be the ones that were laid as eggs 16 years ago this summer and so on and so on. A continuous chain that keeps looping back.